by David Stone
Our guests had gone home, hours ago. Dishes done, drying on the rack, you lounged in one of our old chairs, reading God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. A lamp hung a lemon umbrella above you. Across the room, I sunk into Robert Lowell, interrupting you all the time to read out loud verses that stung me. Rimsky-Korsakoff met the rustle of summer at our window. It was one, two, three, four a.m.... You started to say something. If there was one thing more in the world worth living for, I didn’t know it.
- See also: Binghamton: A Narrative In Verse
The Budget Knew Before the “Emergency”
RIOC anticipated a $7 million Steam Plant demolition for 2015. Nine years later, New York City used emergency authority to carry it out.
The demolition began on paper long before the City invoked emergency authority to carry it out. In RIOC’s fiscal 2013-14 budget, the Corporation set aside $7 million for fiscal 2015 for the complete demolition and cleanup of the Roosevelt Island Steam Plant. RIOC called that figure its worst-case scenario, meaning the State corporation might be left responsible for the entire cost.
